"if" it were an attack on Google rather than HTC, I wonder what it is that has spooked Apple to bring out such a big gun now, rather than earlier?

The fact that the Nexus One is better, hardware-wise, than the iPhone? (Earlier Android devices were intentionally stripped down for the sake of being inexpensive. The Nexus One is not.)

And that HTC's own-branded Android devices compete and better iPhone in a lot of ways. When I moved from iPhone to hero, my contacts suddenly all had photos from Facebook, I didn't have to open apps to check twitter or stock prices, I could add a shortcut to SMS my girl right onto the home screen, and I didn't have to sync anymore.